Google Events displaying inaccurate information

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  • #1273655
    Nina
    Participant

    Google Events is successfully picking up the event information, but the information is not accurate. Sometimes the location is not correct, and other times the time is not correct.

    Is there a way to ensure that the information is accurate in Google, or any way to re-sync it?

    #1274696
    Cliff
    Member

    Hi, Nina.

    There might be some new updates available. Could you please make sure all your Modern Tribe plugins (and WordPress core) are at their latest versions?

    Once you verify you’re on the latest versions, please test to see if the issue is still happening for you.

    If it doesn’t solve it for you, would you be able to share an annotated screenshot, screen capture video, and/or relevant URLs to clarify exactly what’s happening here?

    #1274775
    Nina
    Participant

    Thank you Cliff and whichever Modern Triber gets to answer this email…

    As of right now, the following are the relevant updates:

    #1274863
    Cliff
    Member

    Nina, I didn’t see any examples come through… Please try again.

    #1278250
    Nina
    Participant

    Hi Cliff.
    I had a really in depth response, and it’s frustrating that it didnt show up for you.

    The plugins were updated last week, TEC was just updated again to 4.5.0.2 and TEC Pro has been at 4.4.6.
    WP version is 4.7.4.

    It appears that ALL of the Google Events are 4 hours off, regardless of their location, and the location of the google user.

    We have tried it with timezone mode enabled and disabled, and it does not appear to make a difference.

    Please advise.
    thanks
    .tony

    #1278291
    Cliff
    Member

    Nina/Tony,

    Sorry that detailed reply didn’t come through. Did you reply via email? If yes, maybe it’s in your sent folder?

    Either way, moving forward, I’d suggest taking a single event as a sample and put it through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to see how it digests that URL.

    If you do find some discrepancies there, please share a screenshot of the inaccurate test results and the URL that was tested.

    Please also provide a screenshot of this event’s wp-admin event edit screen so I can see its date and time settings.

    Thank you.

    #1278456
    Nina
    Participant

    Thanks Cliff.

    I ran one thru the structured data test. It appears that is showing the wrong time, just like the Google results. Screenshots below.

    Thanks again for your help. We have had many people showing up to events at the wrong time.

    #1278569
    Cliff
    Member

    It’s interesting, and kind of neat I guess, that people just use Google to view (or maybe remind themselves of) the date and time and don’t actually go to your site to view all the event details.

    I see your timezone is not set in WordPress settings and instead you set a manual UTC offset.

    Since you’re in Virginia, I’d suggest going to wp-admin > Settings > General > and set your timezone to New York.

    First, you could try changing this event’s timezone to New York and see if that helps any. (Of course, make sure to clear your site’s cache before re-testing in Google’s tool.)

    To the possibility of there being a bug here, though, I see that the JSON-LD at http://krishnadas.com/event/yoga-devotion-retreat-krishna-das/ is https://cl.ly/3X0a1k3U3b35

    In other words, it doesn’t have a specified timezone, like my testing site does (set to Chicago timezone but converted to UTC+00:00): https://cl.ly/2O0N1I1Y3u0Z

    So both your site and my site are displaying in UTC time, but your site doesn’t have “+00:00” at the end of the time. I’ll log this bug, as I was able to reproduce the issue on my testing site.

    I’ll also mark this ticket as Pending Fix, which means this thread should receive a reply once the applicable fix has been released. I cannot guarantee when it will be fixed as it’s in the development team’s hands now. They need to assign it, code it, test it, and schedule it for release.

    I apologize for this issue and appreciate your understanding and patience.

    #1278681
    Nina
    Participant

    Hi Cliff.

    I personally wouldn’t look to Google for event info if there was a website to checkout, but as I am sure you have come across, the general public takes the easy way out. For that matter, too many people think googling something is the same as visiting a specific website. But we digress.

    To be clear, this organization is in New York, and holds events around the world. If you look at the schedule, it has events in NY, VA, Europe, and they just got back from CA.

    WordPress DOES have the timezone declared. It used to be set to -4 UTC, but is now set to New York. It doesn’t seem to have changed anything in Google with that change. Screenshot attached.

    I am glad you are finding errors (because errors are fixable), but I am not sure if that UTC issue you found is the only issue.

    Also, I realize this is opening up different can of worms, but it is related. I manage another site that also uses TEC. In that one, the time is usually correct, but the location is not. That organization is in Portland, ME, but holds events around the country. But all of the events, in Google, appear to be in Portland ME.
    onsite: http://www.allagash.com/events
    google search: https://goo.gl/Sqd9qx

    If granting you an admin login to either site would help in troubleshooting, please let me know.

    thanks
    .tony

    #1278733
    Cliff
    Member

    Thanks for the detailed update.

    The WordPress timezone didn’t come through at the time you shared your System Information Report:

    WP TIMEZONE
    Unknown or not set
    WP GMT OFFSET
    -4

    Regardless, this specific event has a timezone of UTC-4:

    Please change this event’s timezone from UTC-4 to New York timezone and see if it fixes it in Google’s testing tool.

    And please create a new thread for that wrong location issue. I don’t think this thread is relevant for digging into that separate issue so you don’t have to link back to this one.

    #1278739
    Nina
    Participant

    This won’t let me move it from ‘pending fix’ to ‘I still need assistance.’

    I just updated the individual event:

    Yoga of Devotion: A Retreat with Krishna Das

    emptyied my cache, and ran it thru the Google tool:
    https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/#url=http%3A%2F%2Fkrishnadas.com%2Fevent%2Fyoga-devotion-retreat-krishna-das

    The same issue appears to be happening.

    #1278794
    Cliff
    Member

    You don’t have to worry about this thread getting Closed while it’s in Pending Fix status.

    I see your event is now displaying with the correct JSON-LD: https://cl.ly/042p3W3e2R3f

    And the testing tool detected this as well: https://cl.ly/2U3q1Z231N2K

     

    As far as Google’s search results actually getting updated, that’s on Google to update every so often. I don’t know what to tell you for its previews (like one of your initial screenshots).

    #1278842
    Jeff
    Participant

    This reply is private.

    #1278844
    Nina
    Participant

    This reply is private.

    #1278866
    Cliff
    Member

    The fact that your event starts at 4PM New York time means the screenshot I shared of 8PM is accurate because it is 8PM UTC:

    “startDate”:”2017-05-26T20:00:00+00:00″,”endDate”:”2017-05-29T18:00:00+00:00″

    The “+00:00” means UTC time.

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